LA LLORONA (1960)
aka The Crying Woman
Article 2833 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-8-2009
Posting Date: 5-16-2009
Directed by Rene Cardona
Featuring Maria Elena Marques, Eduardo Fajardo, Luz Maria Aguilar
Country: Mexico

A man and a woman marry and have a child. Unfortunately, this brings on a curse known by the woman’s father; he tells his son-in-law the story of a female ancestor who, when her husband left her for another woman, killed her children. When a nanny shows up to care for the children, she has an uncanny resemblance to the female ancestor…

Once again, I’m doing a little guessing here; my copy of the movie is in unsubtitled Spanish. Still, I think I pretty much got the gist of it, though it required a bit of patience; I was quite a ways into the movie before I was able to pick up the threads of what was going on, and the nanny doesn’t show up until two-thirds of the way through the movie. However, I don’t think this is one of the better Mexican horror movies; in fact, some of the attempts the nanny makes on the life of the child have a comic touch about them that I suspect wasn’t intentional; I don’t feel this was supposed to be a comedy in any way. The story was based on a legend, and was adapted from a play version. My usual source for plot details of some of these Mexican movies, Robert Cotter’s “The Mexican Masked Wrestler and Monster Filmography” didn’t have a plot description, but it has a quote from the pressbook which I suspect would prove to be a translation of the opening narration, and this is rather entertaining in itself.